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I’ll get to the trees in a minute. But first: I had a fun day yesterday…

A colleague from university got in touch and arranged to visit with his wife. Doug Moorhouse and I were both railway modelling enthusiasts all through school, but it never really came up.

(Apparently, when one is 20 years old, trying to get through post-secondary education, start a career, and impress the many beautiful 20-year-old women in your classes, professing a passion for model trains isn’t considered a conversation-starter: Who knew? Anyway…)

So, fast-forward 30 years or so, and Doug gets in touch. He and his wife Rose are going to hit a local club railway open house on the weekend, and could they come by to see the layout afterwards? Of course!

We had a great time. I gave Doug and Rose a tour of the layout. We even ran a train, and although we didn’t spot any freight or follow a schedule, we did turn the train in Port Rowan and take it back to Simcoe, so we did do a bit of switching. I learned that I still had an emergency stop button programmed on one of my two wireless throttles – a feature that’s easy to accidentally hit, so the DCC system shut off a couple of times mysteriously. (I figured out the problem this morning and reprogrammed the button in question to do something less disruptive to operations.)

Doug works in audio production and was really interested in the ambient audio on my layout, so we discussed the hardware and sound files that I use for that. It was nice to talk audio with another person trained in this stuff…

After tying up the train in Simcoe, the four of us went up the street for dinner at Harbord House (as is the tradition with new visitors to the layout). It was wonderful to reconnect with Doug and to meet Rose. It was interesting to learn that other people from my past life were also railway modellers – including at least one professor. And we’re already planning another get-together.

—

I decided that I wanted to get a little more done on the layout before Doug and Rose visited, so over the past week I worked on more trees for Port Rowan. I’m sure there was still a whiff of hairspray in the air, because the canopy went on Saturday night. But I have finished the trees behind the elevated coal delivery spur and it makes a huge difference to the appearance of this scene. I’ve taken way more photos of St. Williams than of Port Rowan – and I realize that’s in part because Port Rowan has not been as visually interesting, because the scenes lacked the drama of tall trees. Drama? Well, I think they make all the difference in terms of framing what I see through the camera lens. But have a look and judge for yourself.

Here’s a photo from four years ago, without trees:

And here are two photos taken today, from a similar point of view:

I know which look I prefer.

The forest continues to march towards the end of the Port Rowan peninsula. Time to make more trees…

(A tree towering over the billboard on Bay Street completes this scene, which welcomes visitors to the layout. The billboard is my layout’s Establishing Shot)

Recently, a friend on Facebook shared a photo he took during an operating session at my house a couple of years ago. When I looked at the photo, I realized it included several twisted wire tree armatures in the Port Rowan scene. And then I realized that those same trees were still in the “twisted wire armature” stage.

Now, I do like to plant the tree armatures and leave them in place for a while before finishing them, so I can determine whether I like the arrangement and whether they will interfere with operations. After all, crew members have to reach in to the scenes to uncouple – and some will use their left arm, while others will use their right.

But two years is more than sufficient time to determine this, so my friend’s Facebook memory was a call to action. Therefore, I decided it’s time to finish these trees. I started with four trees that are in the foreground of the scene.

This tree – about 10″ tall – is positioned in the meadow, near the apple orchard. It’s in front of the yard throat – but that actually means it’s out of the way of operators, because no uncoupling takes place there:

A shorter tree to the right of that tall one also has a smaller footprint, keeping it out of the way of operators:

This tree – also around 10″ tall – is located next to the garage in Port Rowan. It’s across from the station and, again, in front of a turnout where uncoupling will never happen:

(Note the row of wire tree armatures in the background. Those are next!)

A parting shot – the tree behind the billboard at the end of the Port Rowan peninsula:

Over the past couple of weeks I decided to finish the trees that form the backdrop to the trains in St. Williams. In the above photo, the two boxcars are on the team track while the locomotive at left is on the mainline. The layout makes a 90-degree bend here – not a feature on the prototype – but the trees help to visually soften this. I will further enhance this area with bushes and other undergrowth, but for now the trees make a huge difference and I’m pleased with the change in the layout’s overall appearance.

(With the trees in place, I really notice that my coal shed is still a mock-up. I have a kit in hand for that structure – time to get started on it, I guess!)

I’m especially happy with the small cluster of trees in the foreground at left, which effectively divide the St. Williams run-around into two scenes. Here, CNR 86 enters the “team track” scene heading westbound:

And here, the CNR 15815 leaves the team track scene as it heads eastbound:

Note how the foreground trees (at right in the above photo) effectively obscure the grain storage building. One has to get right into the scene before it is revealed:

While planting the tree armatures the other day, I realized that some of them were too close together. As I adjusted the spacing, I ended up with a spare armature. Since it was a fairly small specimen, I decided it would look nice behind the garage of the house on Charlotteville Street in St. Williams. It now helps frame the depot when viewing the scene from the west:

I note in the above photo that the trees behind the depot represent some of my earlier efforts. They don’t look as nice as my more recent trees, so I’ll have to improve their canopies with better leaf material.

There’s always something to do… and always opportunities to make things better!

I’ve finished adding trees to St. Williams – and what a difference they make to the scene! Compare the two photos below.

Before…

After…

More on the new trees in a future post, but it’s a busy day today. In addition to all the usual things, I’m preparing for a special visitor tomorrow. He’s a friend from out of town – and he’s riding The Canadian to get here!

My friend Chris Abbott visited yesterday after work, and since he hadn’t seen the layout for a little while I showed him my progress on trees in St. Williams.

While discussing the trees, it occurred to us that I could easily improve some of my earlier trees by adding fresh poly-fiber finished with my leaf of choice – the exquisite line from the Nigel Knight at The Selkirk Leaf Company – directly over the top of the old canopies.

Since I had my tree-making materials handy, I gave it a try, adding some new canopy (indicated by the arrow in the photo below) over a tree behind the water tank in the Lynn Valley:

(That looks much better!)

The old canopy material – Woodland Scenics tree netting – can be seen above the newly applied canopy. It doesn’t catch the light as nicely and doesn’t do as nice a job of suggesting “leaves”, in my opinion. This will be an easy update to make, but I won’t do more of it until I finish my new batch of trees in St. Williams.

—

While enjoying dinner at our favourite local establishment, Chris and I observed that hobbyists often find one technique to do something, then stick with that for life.

Even those who do experiment (and I count myself in that group) are often reluctant to go back and redo completed areas of a layout, even though they have changed techniques, materials, or both.

It’s hard do do that when there are other, fresh projects to tackle – but as the photo above makes clear to me, making the effort is well worthwhile.

(Thanks Chris – always great to bounce ideas off you!)

—

I used to use drywall screws to build benchwork, until I learned better. But that means I have a large supply of drywall screws. Is there anything I can do with them? (Besides the obvious use to install drywall, of course…)

Turns out, there is: As I showed Chris last night and as the photo below demonstrates, they make handy place-holders for wire armatures when I remove them from the layout to apply my bark mixture. Kind of like a seat filler at the Oscars…

(Looking east from the west end of ST. Williams. With trees in place, this is looking more like Ontario)

For the past couple of months, I’ve had wire tree armatures in place in St. Williams, to give me a chance to test-run some trains to make sure that my planned placements did not interfere with operations. With some very minor adjustments, all is well – so, over the past few days, I’ve been working on turning the armatures into trees.

I’m making great progress on this front. In fact, I now have trees all along the wall behind the St. Williams team track:

Already, this has made a huge difference to the scene. Compare the photos below with those in this post from early December:

In the following set of photos, I illustrate the sequence in which I add leaf canopy to finished armatures. I start from the back and work my way forwards. The trees here took about an hour to finish:

As I’ve added the canopy, I’ve discovered some new views of the layout, too: vignettes that are now framed by trees.

I’m now about halfway done with the big trees in St. Williams. I’ll need to add bushes and other details, of course. Despite my layout being a fairly modest endeavour, there are always things to do on it…

… and the image prompted the following comments from my friend Mike Cougill:

From the camera’s position there is a really nice sight line through the center of the foreground grove of trees to the overpass.

If you were to relocate one, two or three trees in the middle of that grove toward the left, it would enhance that sight line, making a nicely framed composition of the overpass. Just a thought.

This exchange illustrates two things:

First – the value of mocking up scenes.

Second – the value of sharing them via a blog.

Mike is an artist and knows what he’s talking about. As a result of his feedback, I’ve poked some new holes in the terrain and moved a few of the armatures about to turn a blob of trees into a small grouping at right and a longer, thinner grouping running to the left. And Mike is right – it does improve the composition – whether viewed from track level, from a normal operator’s perspective, and even from close up:

At the same time, the trees continue to do what I intend them to do, which is to visually separate the overpass from the rest of St. Williams, and help create a smoother transition from the tall forest of the Lynn Valley to the more open spaces around St. Williams:

Seen from straight on, the trees will continue to create a visual barrier between the bridge and the first switch in St. Williams – indicated by the switch stand just ahead of the locomotive in this image:

Finally, as part of my testing, I wanted to make sure I can still capture a favourite view, looking along the track towards the Lynn Valley. I liked it so much, I used it as the lead photo for a feature I wrote for Mike’s publication – The Missing Conversation – earlier this year:

(Click on the image to read more about that feature)

It turns out, I can still get this view with the new trees in place. In fact, I think it will look better with the tree line continuing along the scene to both sides of the track, as shown here:

We ran four trains. In addition to the M233 and M238 (seen in the photos with this post), we also took the new doodlebug and a freight extra for a spin. With the exception of turning the mixed train, there was no switching to do – we were returning a couple of staged trains from Port Rowan to Simcoe and points north. But the switching with the mixed train went smoothly – validating my decision to return to using the Kadee 808 couplers.

I was particularly interested in how trains would look rolling through St. Williams, where I’ve temporarily planted a number of tree armatures in the foreground. And I’m pleased. Trains will look even better when these armatures are coated with bark mixture and topped with leafy canopies.

(The new trees will form a short tunnel between St. Williams and the bridge over Stone Church Road)

In adding trees, I like to start with the bare armatures and leave them in place for a bit, while I conduct some operating sessions. This is useful for confirming that the trees will not get in the way of coupling, uncoupling and other tasks.

I make a point of testing the reach-in access for both left-handed and right-handed people. I don’t need to actually do the work with the off-hand – just make sure I can get my arm in and out of a scene without clocking a tree with an elbow. I know I will do a lot of testing with the foreground trees near the middle of the double-ended siding in St. Williams. They’re low, compact trees – but I want to make sure they don’t interfere with dropping and lifting cars in the siding.

(The foreground trees to the right of the tracks will frame the railway as it curves around this corner of the room)

Chris and I started the afternoon with a trip to Harbord House for a serving of bacon, cheese and ale dip, stuffed chicken breast, and pints – followed by a stop at Things Japanese and Bakka-Phoenix Books – all located within a few doors of each other. I have a great neighbourhood.

Chris stayed for dinner, too: A Thai beef curry done in a red sauce and finished with snow peas and clementines. It was nice to have a very relaxing afternoon, with plenty of time to do things – railway-related and otherwise.

Ryan is doing a terrific job. He has a great eye for detail, and is obviously an accomplished modeller. What’s particularly impressive is that he’s only been back in the hobby for a few years after a long time away from it for all the usual reasons. From his layout design, to the equipment, to the structures and scenery, everything looks like the product of a modeller with decades of experience under his belt. Well done!

I’ve recently been working on trees for the St. Williams area of my layout, so I was particularly interested in Ryan’s tree-building efforts. Click on the image, below, to visit his blog and learn how he makes those terrific Eastern White Pines:

The afternoon gave me some great ideas for filling in the space under my taller trees with saplings and other plantings to give my forested areas more bulk. I predict another visit to the craft store in the near future to pick up some craft brooms and other materials. And I’m going to build a few of those pines, just because they look great.

The Algonquin Railway runs very nicely and we spent a most satisfying hour or so switching out typical railway customers in northern Ontario, aided for part of the session by Ryan’s young son – who will one day make a fine railway modelling enthusiast, I expect.

After our session, we retired to The Feathers for lamb and ale stews, pints, and more conversation, and I had much to think about on the streetcar ride home.

Thanks for the great afternoon, Ryan! I’m looking forward to our next get-together…

My recent work on tobacco kilns has put more focus on the St. Williams scene, and I decided it was time to build more trees. So I’ve also been working on twisting armatures – a great project to undertake while vegetating in front of the television.

I have done 28 and while they still need to be gooped and adorned with a canopy, I can already envision how they will improve the scene:

It’s a fair reach into the layout to plant the trees behind the grain storage building – so to protect the cornfield along the front edge of the scene I cobbled together a quick “belly barrier” from styrene sheet, scrap wood and a couple of clamps:

It’s crude but it does the trick.

Layouts swallow trees – even big trees like these – distressingly quickly. I’ll need another two dozen trees (plus saplings, bushes, etc.) to complete this area. I can do a half-dozen armatures in an evening before my hands become tired of twisting wire, so I’ll be doing more of these over the coming week or two…

Resources

Charles Cooper's Railway Pages
The author of “Hamilton’s Other Railway” and “Rails to the Lakes” – two books the cover other parts of the line that I model – also has a huge amount of terrific content online. Brew a mug and spend a while…

CNR Historical Association
From prototype information to paint, this is an important resource for the serious CNR modeller. Publishers of “CN Lines” magazine, as well as a DVD of back issues.

CNR In Ontario
Jeffrey Smith maintains a website with invaluable information for anybody interested in modelling the Canadian National Railway in Ontario. Grab a mug or pint, and prepare to spend some time!

GPS Video
DVDs of Canadian subjects – including Railway Recollections V5, which includes some vintage film of the Port Rowan line.

S Scale SIG
An NMRA-affiliated group dedicated to scale model railroading in 1:64. Given the dominance of American Flyer-style railroading in this scale, the SIG is a welcome addition to our online community!

Steam Era Freight Cars – Blog
A blog run by Marty McGuirk which is about exactly what it sounds like: Freight cars from the steam era and how to model them. Some neat information about specific industries, too.

Pacific Rail Shops
No longer in business, but an important supplier of rolling stock kits for S scale enthusiast. This link takes you to their story. It’s worth a read – and you may be surprised by how they still influence the hobby today.

Proto:87 Stores
Don’t let the name fool you: While this company primarily caters to the finescale HO market, Andy Reichert also offers some wicked-good scale spikes for 1:64.

Ridgehill Scale Models
My friend David Clubine and his late father Oliver run this supplier of resin kits for S scale rolling stock.

What others are doing

Algonquin Railway
My friend Ryan Mendell’s blog about his freelanced regional railway, set in Northern Ontario in April of 1977 and built in a 12′ x 12′ room.

AT&SF San Jacinto in 1:64
Philippe Cousyn is an excellent modeller. He lives in the Paris (France) area, but models the Perris (California) area in 1:64.

B&O Old Main Line
Jim Fawcett is building a layout based on a neat prototype: The Baltimore and Ohio’s 65-mile Old Main Line from Baltimore to Point of Rocks. He’s modelling a 20-mile stretch of the subdivision and blogging about it here.

bobcatt's 2 bits
A blog written by my friend Chris Abbott, who frequently helps with the building of my layout.

Bogong and Geehi Railway
Australian modeller Murray Scholz is building a lovely Australian narrow gauge layout in O scale.

Border District
Australian railways are neat – and the models are too. This one, an HO scale proto-freelanced layout being built by Anthony Palmer, caught my eye…

Central Vermont Railway
An interesting blog by my friend Marty McGuirk about his Central Vermont Railway – and other things.

CNR Fergus Sub
Andreas Keller is building a great, achievable HO scale layout set in the mid-1980s and based on a 14-mile segment of the Canadian National in southern Ontario. You can read about Andreas’ layout on John Longhurst’s blog.

CNR Waterloo Spur
My friend Robin Talukdar blogs about his plans to re-create the CNR line between Kitchener and Elmira, Ontario. He’s also building an exhibition layout based on the CNR Pine Street Spur, serving a paper mill in Thorold, Ontario.

Eastport Branch
Ben Brown was building a Maine Central branch in Proto:48. Unfortunately, he passed away before he could finish it, but (for now) his layout lives on, online.

Elgin Car Shops blog
My friend Pierre Oliver regularly updates his blog with information on rolling stock he’s building for customers, the HO scale rolling stock in his own line of kits, and – most importantly – his Wabash layout.

Fillmore Avenue Roundhouse
My friend Rick De Candido has built a terrific layout based on an unusual theme: a New York Central engine service terminal in Buffalo. This was featured in the 2015 edition of Model Railroad Planning magazine.

Iowa Interstate – Milan branch
Scott Thornton is building a lovely HO scale rendition of a branch of the Iowa Interstate Railroad. It’s exactly the sort of layout I advocate on my Achievable Layouts blog.

Iowa Interstate Grimes Line
James McNab is building a delightful, prototype-based, modern-era short line operation in HO scale – exactly the sort of subject I advocate on my Achievable Layouts blog. Here’s a link to his blog at Model Railroad Hobbyist.

Louisiana Central
Jack Shall’s HO scale railroad, linking the Texas and Pacific with the Mississippi Central through the Tunica Hills.

New Castle Industrial Railroad
Real railroad conductor Jack Hill writes about his O scale modern switching layout. Lots to learn on this blog, but unfortunately it has been dormant for quite some time.

Waterloo Region Model Railway Club
At the opposite end of the spectrum from the layout I’m building, this group is constructing a massive layout that accurately models the CP Rail Sudbury Division in the 1970s. This club is southern Ontario’s answer to La Mesa and the NEB&W.

X The Social Side X

Cook's Illustrated
When friends gather for a work session or operating night, a good meal goes a long way towards making it memorable. But what if you’re puzzled by pans? Cook’s Illustrated is the geek’s answer to great cooking – check it out!